As a kid growing up, I was always fascinated when in the cartoons and
TV shows I used to watch, there was a character who would make an
offer, inevitably to the main character to tell them their future. The concept
of knowing what to expect or what decisions I should make now to either achieve
or divert whatever awaits me is a powerful one to a young mind, and
at an age when there is so much still ahead of you a million different
pathways, knowing what to expect feels like it would bring you safety, clarity,
maybe some direction. Inevitably, in these shows, there's always a little
bit of awesome sprinkled with a little bit of tragedy in whatever the hero finds
out, and the one doing the fortune telling generally reads their palm or uses
some form of tarot cards to see the future. And while these two methods
are in fact still in use today, there are many others throughout the years
that perhaps have not survived quite as well. In pre modern times, people
who want to know the future didn't necessarily have access to the so called magical
artifacts like crystal balls or the aforementioned tarot cards, and so would make do
with what they had around them. And what did everyone have at hand?
More often than not, well, that's right, food and well. Many
of these old food based fortunes were lighthearted party games mainly played around Halloween time.
Some of them were deadly serious and their results were taken as the gospel
truth. And at the time all you needed to tell the future was a
full pantry and a little imagination. These are the bizarre but true stories from
history that in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this
is the fantastic history of food. One of today's spot is Athletic Greens.
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ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. It might
sound strange to us now, but for a long time, and in fact
still in some parts of Massachusetts, the night before Halloween was known as Cabbage
Night. The origin of this seems to stem from an old Scottish tradition that
made its way to the Americas as more and more people settled there. It
seemed to take off especially well in a small town in Massachusetts named Framingham,
as in this particular town there happened to be rather a lot of Dutch immigrants
who had settled in the area. Now that Dutch, as many of you
may know, are rather large fans of cabbage, and in fact can even
claim the title of having invented coleslaw, and this meant there was an abundance
of cabbages being grown in the fields around the town with which to tell the
future when each year Cabbage Night rolled around. But just what was this old
Scottish tradition originally known there as kaling? All About well around Halloween time,
it was said that the vale between the real world and the spirit world grew
especially thin, and that any sort of magical divination was particularly potent. Young
unmarried girls and women were desperate to know who it was that they were going
to marry, and what better way to find out than by getting a leafy
green vegetable to tell you. Now, each year, the young girls would
sneak out of town into the fields of the local farmers, and when they
arrived, they would ritually blindfold one another and then walk slowly into the kale
fields. At some point they would stop, bend down, feel around a
bit for a stalk of kale nearby to them, and once they had found
one, they would gently pull the entire stalk out of the ground, roots
and all, and then run home with them safely tucked in a bag or
under the arm. Once they were home, those with their blindfolds on were
unbandaged, and their kale was laid on the table for all to see and
inspect. Now, the size, the shape, and the appearance of the
stork on the table gave clues as to who the soon to be love interest
may be. In the book A Halloween Wraith by William Black, he describes
some signs of how to interpret the kale before you. He says, maybe
you would rather not have pulled a stork that was tall and straight and strong,
for that may mean you would be wed to that boy alistair. Now,
maybe you would find that you had pulled up a withered old stump with
a lot of earth at the root, for that would mean marrying a decrepit
old man with plenty of money in the bank, or maybe rather you would
wish for one that is slim and supple and not so tall, so that
it may represent that boy Johnny Semple with whom you are already in love.
Now, they were, of course, even more possible meanings to judge the
kale. Buy a close white head of leaves meant an old man for a
husband, while an open green head meant a young one. The girls would
also taste the stem, and whatever the flavor, sour or sweet, would
represent their future husband's disposition. Sometimes the stalks were hung above the door,
and if yours had been hung up third in the row, and then the
third boy to walk through the door had the name John, Well, then
that would also be the name of the man you were to marry. Now,
what of the enduring Halloween pranks still in action today is the infamous ding
Dong ditch, and this seemingly got its start around the same time as these
kale divinations. You see, once you had determined who you thought the kale
was trying to tell you would be your future husband, you would then take
the big lump of kale, stalk, roots, dirt and all, and
throw it as hard as you could against your future husband's door before running away
to safety unseen. This would then let them know that they were in the
running to get married and give them enough time to either prepare themselves or you
run away. But the British Isles and their seeming overabundance of kale, had
a few other magical practices based around this leafy green. Some people would hang
kale over their doors at night to ward away evil spirits, or even place
it under their pillows as they slept to induce prophetic dreams. Children who were
desperate for a sibling would surreptitiously place a stork of kale outside their parents' bedroom
door in the hopes that this would encourage that sibling into being. But the
Irish, not to be outdone, would make a dish known as colcannon,
which consisted of potato, cabbage, onion, and of course kale in it.
They would hide little charms inside the dish, and the people would then
blindly dish up their portion from the larger bowl or pot. Whoever found the
ring charm was destined to marry within the year, but whoever found the thimble
charm would somewhat harshly be considered a spinster forever now. Potentially, as a
last resort for the person who drew the thimble, they could also scoop the
very first and the very last spoonful into a stocking and then hang it over
her door. The first unmarried man to walk beneath it the following day would
be destined to be her husband. Must stay with us, as after the
break, we're going to be diving into a whole lot more of a household
fortune telling foodstuffs. This episode is presented by Chemists in the Kitchen by lab
X, a YouTube video series spotlighting the power of chemistry and how science and
food can bring people together. In each episode, real scientists walk you through
things like making your own pickles, the chemistry behind ceviche, or the formula
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it's just a lot of fun. Season two is airing right now,
and you can catch up with every episode for free on YouTube by searching Chemists
in the Kitchen or by simply going to YouTube dot com slash lab x nas.
Again, that's YouTube dot com slash lab x nas. Of all the
methods of historic fortune telling practiced with consumable items, the reading of tea leaves
is probably the most famous and the most enduring of them all. The reading
of tea leaves is otherwise known as tassiography, and it originated in the Baltic
and the Slavic nations, who were closely related to the Romani people. But
the Romani people, once more commonly known as Gypsies, although that term has
since been deemed unsuitable and potentially offensive, lived a famously nomadic lifestyle. Being
that the tea and the coffee trade routes came right through their usual settlement lands,
they were the catalyst for the spread of tassiography as a practice, and
when it came to the reading of coffee grounds. This practice first originated in
the palaces of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteen hundreds. It wasn't as serious
as a practice there as much as a simple way to pass the time.
The emperor's concubines would spend many boring hours in the harem, and one of
the ways to make the time pass more quickly was to drink their Turkish coffee
and then tell each other's fortunes using the coffee grounds as part of their chatting
and gossip. And when it came to the reading of tea leaves, however,
there were a variety of ways you could go about doing this. One
of the descriptions is as follows. After a cup of tea has been poured
without using a tea strainer, the tea is drunk or poured away. The
cup should then be shaken well and any remaining liquid drained off in a saucer.
The diviner now looks at the pattern of tea leaves in the cup and
allows the imagination to play around with the shape suggested by them. They might
look like a letter, a heart shape, or a ring, and these
shapes are then interpreted intuitively or by means of a fairly standard system of symbolism,
such as a snake meaning enmity or falsehood, a spade meaning good fortune
through industry, a mountain meaning a journey or hindrance, or a house meaning
change and success. It's also worth noting that in this description, the act
of shaking the cup was very much in the minority, as most practitioners would
rather have had you drink the tea, just leaving a small amount of liquid
inside the cup with the tea leaves, and the swirling the cup three times
clockwise before emptying the tea leaves into the saucer. Now, there was time,
in fact, in the nineteen twenties and fifties in New York City when
fortune tellers using tea leaves were so conspicuous that they actually fell found with the
morality laws mentioned in a previous episode, they were not allowed to charge for
their services, and in fact, entire sting operations were set up at tea
houses around the city simply to try and catch a fortune teller in the act.
On moving back to the British Isles, in Scotland in particular, we
come upon an old practice using nuts to determine if an upcoming marriage would be
a successful one. In some places, Halloween itself was called nutcrack Night,
or the sacrifice of the nuts. On that day, if a man brought
a woman some walnuts, it meant that he was her true love. But
nuts were also used in a different way to tell how a potential relationship may
pan out. The practice itself is incredibly simple, and in fact, the
famous Scottish poet Robbie Burns wrote about it in his poem Halloween, saying,
the old goodwife's well hoarded nuts are round and round divided, and many lads
and lass's fates are there that night decided. Essentially, what they would do
is that the bride and groom to be would each place a chestnut in a
pan and then place that pan over the open fire to roast. The chestnuts
were each given one of the couple's names beforehand, and there was then up
to the fire to see how the named nuts behaved. If both chestnuts stayed
in place, slowly roasting without rolling away, it was taken as a good
omen for a happy marriage. If, however, they crackled, popped and
bounced around, well that was obviously not such a great sign. Now,
some young women would use the fire and the nuts to test out the suitability
of certain partners before committing to one of them. With a particularly interesting ritual,
these women would also give each nut the name of one young lad,
and then she would throw those named chestnuts or hazel nuts directly into the fire
itself. If the nut then burst into flame, as opposed to just simply
roasting away slowly, it was a sign that the relationship would be doomed.
Then. The writer Ruth ed Na Kelley wrote of this practice that it had
a dark and a sinister side to it, as it was hard to escape
the imagery of an old time sacrifice to an idol as you watched the nuts
turn and writhe in the flames, burning and then growing black. But they
were, however, some more lighthearted games. The young people would play.
One of them, which still exists to this day, although without the connotations
at once came with it. Bobbing for apples had a very similar sister game
that was played as a pagan ritual, and it was called snap apple.
The goal of snap apple was still very much to bite and hold an apple
in your mouth without the use of your hands, but rather than having your
face splashed with water, this one came with a potentially more damaging consequence.
You see, the apples weren't immersed in water at all, but rather were
attached to the bottom of a stick that was suspended in the air. On
the top of the stick, at the other end from the apple was a
lit candle. Now I'm sure you can imagine why this must have been quite
a dangerous game to play. If you were too violent in your attempt to
bite the apple, or potentially not aggressive enough, you could easily send the
stick spinning, splashing your face with burning hot liquid wax from the candle above.
But here's where the game's rules make that outcome almost an inevitability. It's
not just one person trying to bite the apple. It was a few young
women all trying to bite it at once, because the person who could take
the first bite would then be said to be the first of the group to
get married, or, in some circumstances, the one who would end up
having the happiest marriage. So for the girls at the time, the stakes
were high and a little molten candlewax wasn't going to stop them from winning.
But snap apple aside, apples in general tended to show up more often than
not amongst the food based traditions of early Halloween. In fact, you may
not be able to look at bobbing for apples the same again once you find
out that the original game was meant to mimic the drowning of women to test
if they were witches or not. Apple's connection to Halloween is said to be
tied to the colonization efforts of the Romans, who tied their autumn apple festival
to the Celtic Samman Festival, marking the end of the harvest season and the
darker days to come. Bobbing for apples was also used as a matchmaking game
in some parts, where apples would be labeled or marked other young men and
woman playing, and then all thrown together into a big tub of water.
The person who ended up biting and catching your apple then clearly stood a very
high chance of being your perfect mate, and in what seems to be the
millionth different tradition all focused on marriage and matchmaking, apples could also supposedly tell
one's future simply by using their peelings. A person would peel an apple all
in one long strip and then throw that peel over their shoulder and onto the
ground. If that peel stayed unbroken and in one piece, it could be
examined as to which letter it most closely resembled, and this would be the
initial of a future love interest. And in an even more bizarre apple related
fortune telling method, it was said that you needed to simply stand in front
of a mirror once you were there. All you had to do was shine
a candle in front of you into the mirror and then eat an apple.
Apparently, an image of your future husband would appear over your shoulder. In
a slight variation of this, the apple would be cut into nine pieces beforehand.
The person performing the ritual would eat eight of the pieces, and then
supposedly the lover would appear in person to the house asking to eat the ninth
piece. So today, if you're inclined to want to discover more about your
own love life, I presented to you multiple ways to peek into the future
to see what it may hold in the way of a loving partner. Simply
paint to your pantry, find some of the ingredients listed above, and within
no time you'll be leaping into the arms of your brand new love interest.
But don't forget to tell them the fantastic history of food sent you. This
show is made entirely by me, Nick Charlie Key, with our theme music
having been made by the enigma that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd
like to support the show, the simplest way to do that is over on
our Patreon account. There's just one option, so for just two bucks a
month, you'll help me keep producing the show, and in return, you'll
get your name forever etched onto our supporters Wall of Fame over on our website,
and then maybe listen out for your name in an upcoming episode. So,
until next time, bonau petit.